‘No.’
‘I need you to be with me,’ she said, and Catriona understood the words this time. Good words. Her mother loved her. She really did need her to survive. As bad as things were for Irene, they would be worse if she killed herself, and Catriona did want to. Day and night since arriving at Cambusvale, she had punched at herself with intense hatred. What had she done? What sort of person was she?
‘You must promise me something,’ Irene said. ‘You must never leave Scotland. Stay close to Anna. She’s the only other person who truly loves you. Don’t be scared of Anna, of what you feel. Don’t run away when you’re not feeling well.’
Catriona didn’t agree so much as not disagree. She cried and held her mother as tightly as she could, just as she used to when she was fifteen.
There was only one other matter to deal with.
Irene whispered in her daughter’s ear, ‘Tell me exactly where you put the secateurs.’
Irene had begged Cat not to disclose this information to anyone after her arrest. She was in a bad enough position already.
‘Stop!’ she’d said when her daughter began to speak of it in the visits room after being remanded. ‘Don’t ever talk about that. Don’t talk about it to anyone. Shut it away in a box.’
She’d done as her mother asked, although constant flashes of the weapon had plagued her since.
Cat took a few deep breaths, and thought back to the night she went to Glasgow Airport to meet Stewart. She waited in arrivals for an hour before news of the cancellation flashed on the screen. Relieved, she sat in the airport car park and phoned Joe. As usual, there was no response.
Catriona cried in the car for a while. What a stupid, idiotic week she’d had. She could still smell the wrong-sex on her skin. She rang Anna’s – she was on a late shift – and then plonked herself in a pub to douse the stench of her madness with vodka. Staggering to Anna’s afterwards, she felt like throwing up. She sat on the side of the road to compose herself, reached into her handbag for headache tablets, and felt something cold. She peered into her bag. Inside was a pair of secateurs, their short, crooked blades bloodstained and gritty. She gasped, looked around, grabbed the secateurs by the handle, and slipped them down a grate in the road.
‘In Gibson Street?’ Irene asked.
‘Just near the corner of Glasgow Street. Near Anna’s . . . But, Mum, you can’t do this.’
‘I have to. I can’t watch you die. And you will. But you remember the promise?’
‘I remember.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too . . . Mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wish we could spend more time alone, just the two of us.’
After organising things at home, Irene drove to Glasgow and waited in a bar on Byres Road until the side streets were dark and empty. She walked to Gibson Street, torch in hand, and checked around her. Was anyone coming? She heard footsteps, voices, and stopped dead until the noises faded and the street was empty again. The corner of Glasgow Street and Gibson Street was a block away from the main drag. Tall tenements lined one side of the street, the car park where she’d left her Honda Civic was at the other. There were two grates. One on the car park side, one on the tenement side. She walked to the one near the car park, hoping it would be the right one because it was darker, and not overlooked by the bay windows of the sandstone buildings. Irene glanced around her again. She was alone. Crouching down in the gutter, she pointed her torch into the grate. The weak light reflected black, nothing but black.
‘Everything all right?’
Irene gasped, stood up, pointed her torch at the face before her, which belonged to a uniformed police officer.
‘Oh God, sorry officer, you frightened me to death. I lost my keys.’
The officer had a bigger, better torch.
Shit, Irene thought.
He leant down and pointed it into the grate. Down, to the side, to the other side.
Oh God, oh God. Irene’s breathing was sharp, terrified.
To the bottom again.
‘Nothing down there,’ he said, flicking his light on the pavement around them.
‘Thanks, officer, I’ll go home and call the AA in the morning.’ ‘There are taxis at the station,’ he said. ‘Take care.’
‘Cheers.’
Irene hid in the underground for an hour before venturing outside again, and when she reached Gibson Street, a raucous group of students were singing their way home. She followed them, waited till they disappeared over the hill, and ran to the grate on the other side of the street.
Black again, but not as black. The lights from the bay windows were reflected in the water at the bottom. It was perhaps a metre deep.
She put her fingers through the diagonal metal grate and pulled. It came away easily. She reached her hand down into the void – further, her arm fully extended – and touched water. She looked around her and lay on her stomach, reaching as far as she could into the grot of the drain, feeling thick wet street gunk, a lump, a rock, water, something else.
They were there.
Reaching again, she fumbled in the hole as the noise of a car engine got louder and louder. Too late to move. She flattened herself on the ground, grasping, reaching at the same time.
Ah. The car hadn’t noticed her, or if it had, it had continued on over the summit of Gibson Street.
The secateurs. She had them in her hand. She tossed them in her bag, replaced the metal grate and ran over the street to her car.
‘Hey!’ someone yelled as she fumbled to get her keys into the door.
Irene didn’t look back. She unlocked the door, got in, locked it, started the engine, and looked over her shoulder to reverse out.
The officer was at her back window.
‘Jesus!’ she yelped, braking suddenly.
He jumped to the side, walked to her window and gestured for her to unwind, which she did, just an inch.
‘So you found them,’ he said.
‘You’re scary!’ she replied. ‘They were in my bag all along. You know what they say about a woman’s handbag.’
‘Watch what you’re doing, eh? You nearly killed me.’
‘I will. Sorry. Goodbye, officer.’ Irene closed the window and drove home as law-abidingly as she could.
34
Anna was distraught at Catriona’s departure. But, by now, she understood the pattern. As usual, she was torn between being fed up with the trouble her mad friend carried with her, and being fed up with being completely and utterly in love with her.
Why did she love her? How could she love a woman so crippled by a fear of herself and a fear of loving? Each time a lengthy separation occurred, Anna came to her senses again and promised herself she’d keep her distance, not get involved, not be responsible, find her own life. Then, every time she saw her again, she knew why she couldn’t keep these promises. Catriona brought bumps, hillocks, mountains, to an otherwise flat world. It wasn’t just the curve of Catriona’s back and the softness of her lips that Anna loved. She was intelligent, loyal, generous and tremendous fun.
Anna spent the next two days wondering what she should do. Two eight-hour early shifts, using work-avoidance techniques such as carrying files purposefully from one part of the building to another and going to the toilet on the hour.
When she got home, she realised Irene Marsden had left a message.
‘She’s gone to Italy. Anna! She’s gone. Get her, please!’
Not long after, Anna was boarding an expensive BA flight to Pisa.
Meanwhile, Janet arrived home from Cambusvale Prison and ate a lamb curry and three frozen Mars Bars. She drank half a bottle of whisky, tore up all the photographs of Davina, and leafed through the notes and photographs of the Catriona Marsden case.
She was too drunk to notice anything new and decided to go to bed fully clothed, to hell with it, but as she got up from her sofa, one photograph fell to the floor. She picked it up and looked at it closely.
; ‘Almighty God,’ she said out loud.
She rang several numbers, but the only one she managed to get through to was Pietro.
‘She’s not here,’ Pietro said. ‘They’ve headed up to Vagli di Sotto.’
‘What’s the name of the hotel?’ Janet asked. ‘
‘Massimo’s,’ he answered.
She hung up without saying goodbye, and googled the hotel. When Massimo himself finally answered the phone, Janet made use of her excellent Italian before faxing a photograph with a covering note in thick black felt-tip pen.
35
Joe was already making his way up the stairs as I sidled by reception. Massimo, the elderly hotelier, put his finger to his lips to hush me, and handed me an envelope. He whispered conspiratorially, ‘Is just for you. Da Una Signorina Janet.’
Janet bitchface Edgely.
He’d sealed the envelope.
My instinct was to toss it in the bin. I decided against it, but I didn’t want to read it either. Reading that woman’s bullshit had nearly killed me. I wasn’t going to let it ruin my weekend.
I hid the envelope in my bag as Joe turned around at the top of the stairs. ‘You coming?’
I threw my bag under the bed while Joe was in the loo. When he came out, he pushed me onto the bed. He was more passionate than I’d ever known him before, ripping my pants from my body, hurling me this way and that, taking me, having me, all mine, slut.
‘What?’
‘I thought you liked talking dirty.’
‘I suppose I did say that . . .’ This was when we first met, in Anna’s bathroom. He had responded very enthusiastically.
‘You’re a dirty slut,’ he said, still pushing.
‘No, Joe, not like that. I don’t like that.’
‘Okay, okay, sorry,’ he said. He was done anyway. Did I want a nightcap?
I did.
He took a long time to get it. I pulled the covers over me and looked out at the moon. The silhouette of the mountain tops was vague against the deep blue-black sky. I walked over to the window. The cemetery flickered with candlelight across the way, its square stone walls a safe place for the dead.
Where was he?
I walked out of the room to the bar area on the ground floor. The fire was still burning, but the hotel owners had gone to bed. It must have been past midnight. Joe wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
Returning to my room, I had a pee, and came out of the bathroom to find that Joe had returned. He’d brought some limoncello in from the car, which was parked around the back of the hotel. He poured a glass and handed it to me.
‘Have this. I’ll just be a sec.’
He went into the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the bed and took a sip. Joe was taking ages. I wanted him to come back to me, to tell me that it hadn’t really happened with Giulia, that I wasn’t really a dirty little slut. I wanted him to hold me and tell me I was okay, that we were okay.
What was Joe doing in there? Fucking hell, hurry up for God’s sake. What sort of shit takes over ten minutes? I sat up, angry suddenly, and thought of my exes.
Sometimes they’d made me angry. Johnny, wearing the mustard jumper when I bought him two new ones from M&S.
Rory, dictating what we should watch each day, slagging my job, making me feel inferior, still living with his po-faced mother and hen-pecked father in their ridiculously large Georgian townhouse.
Mani, not even arguing for the baby, not even coming with me when it was sucked out.
Stewart, choosing steroids over decent love-making with me.
Joe. He’d screwed women, other women, then and now.
What the fuck kind of poo could take so long and cause so much noise? Like banging? He was beginning to piss me off. In my haze of sick drunkenness, I started to realise that he might not be very different from the others. He’d fled as soon as I was arrested. Hadn’t even visited me till Mum begged him. He’d not even given me a house key. I’d had to leave the back door open.
What was taking so long?
He’d hit me.
Tonight he’d pinned my arms down and called me a slut. In fact, he’d called me a slut that very first night in Anna’s bathroom. His cousin Diana too – all women were sluts.
Had these men mapped my life’s journey, as I’d originally thought – a progression towards self-knowing, each closer to the right thing? Or were they the same, over and over and over again? Wearing the clothes they wanted to wear, kissing and dressing and fucking the way they wanted to, not listening, caring a little less each day, hurting me, always hurting me, in the end.
‘What the fucking hell are you doing in there?’ I yelled, the sickness and the irritation and the alcohol a rage cocktail.
‘Joe? JOE? I know what you’ve been trying to do! You just want to hurt me, like the others . . . I get it now! Get out here! You hear me, you fucking bastard? NOW!’
‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? JOE? GET OUT HERE NOW!’
I felt sick. A terrible feeling of drunkenness and nausea. An inability to move. What was Joe doing in there? I banged on the door, then slipped down to the floor.
I felt tearful, furious, confused. I had broken Mum’s promise. Why had I done that? Why had I left her for some guy who sleeps around and isolates me and tells me I’m fat and has secret diaries with stranger’s names inside and spends an hour in the toilet? Why had I gone off my medication?
‘JOE!’
I remembered the envelope. I poked my head under the bed where I’d thrown my bag, nearly fainting with dizziness from the effort. There it was inside. I opened it.
FOR CATRIONA MARSDEN ONLY!
CONFIDENTIAL AND URGENT!
Inside was a photograph of Johnny. He was judging a dancing competition. The date was on the bottom in red. It was the day he died. Just before he met me at the Hammer Bar.
Behind him was a crowd.
One person was taking a photograph.
One was smiling.
One clapping.
The ceiling was spinning. Champagne, red wine, limoncello: not to be recommended. It didn’t feel nice.
‘Hi there,’ Joe said, pushing the door of the bathroom against me and exiting the en suite at last. ‘What you doing down there?’
I didn’t like him. He was hovering over me. He might have been about to pin my arms down again or tell me to stay indoors and rest on the sofa for days, weeks, months, for God’s sake.
‘You’re not so nice,’ I slurred.
‘Cat, my love, let me put you to bed.’
‘SEE!’ He wanted to put me to bed. He wanted to have me, keep me, hide me, call me fat, erode my self-esteem, piece by piece.
‘No!’ I tried to yell, flicking my limp arm from his grasp.
‘What’s upset you?’ he asked, hovering over me, his face, large and square. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photograph, blurry as it was. Poor Johnny. He died not long after it was taken. Horribly. And he didn’t know. No one knew. Not the other judges, the dancers on the floor, the person in the crowd taking the photograph, the person clapping, the person standing at the back with his hair slicked back.
I squinted. The photo was dissolving before me and Joe was trying to take it from me, but he wasn’t managing because I was determined to see if what I was seeing was real. Was it? Could it be? I gripped the photo tightly, moved my face close-in, focused . . .
The person standing at the back of the crowd, his hair slicked back, was the same person that was standing beside me, the person trying to get hold of the photograph. Joe.
‘You . . . Glasgow . . .’ I said, trying to sit up, but unable to.
Joe finally snatched the fax from me and examined the photograph slowly. He put it down and kissed me on the forehead.
‘First my diaries, now this . . .’
‘You’re . . . trryiiing to clontolll meeee . . .’ My brain wasn’t communicating properly with my tongue and mouth.
‘Now remember what we agreed?’ Joe said, picking me up and putting me on the
bed.
‘Whaaaaa . . .’
He lifted my left arm up and then dropped it down, a dead weight on the mattress.
‘Wh . . . aaat?’ I managed.
‘What we agreed . . .’
I was falling asleep. Not a good sleep. A spinning one. What had we agreed?
He looked into my eyes. ‘The secret knock.’
‘Sorrrrrreee?’
‘You know, Catriona, the secret knock.’
His head was awfully close to mine . . . as he said . . . ‘Toreador.’
36
Joe had loved his dear departed Nonna Giuseppina. He loved how hard she’d worked, moving to Scotland with her good-looking husband, Alessandro, and toiling tirelessly to make the family business a success. He loved her devotion to the men of the family. He loved that she’d been a woman of faith, praying hard at mass each Sunday and living as Christ had taught her. He loved how she’d maintained her dignity when a red-haired Scottish waitress called Agnes McCulloch started sleeping with her husband; how she’d held her head high when the heathens left their families to live in sin in a flat in Partick. Most of all, Joe loved that Nonna Giuseppina had battled through the abandonment and shame and loneliness to take care of her grandson from the day he was born until the family moved back to Italy when he was ten years old.
She was a wonderful woman. She had taught him many things.
Once, when she and Joe were walking down Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, they had spotted Agnes McCulloch walking towards them.
‘Hi, Agnes!’ six-year-old Joe said.
‘Hi, Joe,’ Agnes replied nervously.
When Joe got home, Nonna Giuseppina sat him down at the kitchen table, took a kitchen knife from the drawer, and sat opposite him. His mother and father, as usual, were at work. She slowly sliced her forearm with the knife until it bled.
‘When you hurt me, this is what happens,’ she said to Joe. ‘Taste it,’ she said.
Joe didn’t want to taste the blood.
‘Taste how you hurt me,’ she repeated, with a voice that told him he must.
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